Daggers made of human bone were regularly used in mortal combat in New Guinea, and now scientists find these weapons were specially engineered for strength so they could find repeated usein violent confrontations.

Bone daggers were once widespread in New Guinea. The weapons were worn on men’s upper arms, and were carved with elaborate inscriptions. However, they were more than just ornaments.

“They were used for hand-to-hand combat, or to finish off victims wounded with spears or arrows,” said study lead author Nathaniel Dominy, a biological anthropologist at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire. “When two men faced off with each other, they tried to stab each other in the neck with these daggers, and if one succeeded in inserting his dagger between cervical vertebrae, he would twist the dagger and break his victim’s neck. That was the sole purpose of these daggers.”

I called my insurance company for a clinic referral, then dialed a few places on a list the guy in their Indian call center emailed. Over the phone, the clinics all sounded like places you'd take a pork chop to be examined, not a human breast, not a person, and not me. I googled around and found a place with a lot of stars on Yelp and other online ratings services from women who'd gone and felt they'd been treated well.
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. The women who answered the phone there sounded cool. I made an appointment.

I live online as much as I live offline. Often, I move around in the world staring into a device as I walk, sharing bits of one realm with the other. The morning I went in for my first mammogram, I felt nervous. I would tweet this new thing, like I do with lots of new things, and make the unknown and new feel less so. Maybe by doing so, I thought while I was driving, other women like me who'd never done this would also feel like it was less weird, less scary, more normal and worth doing without hesitation. I'd crack some 140-character jokes. I'd make fun of myself and others. I would Instagram my mammogram.

The women at the front desk were kind and welcoming. Both were from Virginia, like me. One of them is from the back-country part where there's still no internet. Her dad and uncle work the fields. We talked about growing corn and hogs, how they still make cane molasses with a horse-drawn grinder, and about poor white Appalachian babies nursed on Mountain Dew.

The mammogram technologist saw on my chart that I'd lost a loved one to . She had too. I hugged her, and she hugged back. She folded my body into the machine, pressed some buttons, folded me another way, and the machine clicked and whirred and clicked and whirred. Then it was over. She told me to wait.

I tweeted the waiting. Inviting the internet in is something I do every day anyway, but this time it was like a shield. Nothing bad can happen in a new place if you're cracking jokes and 50,000 people are watching. You're safe out here, in here, out here.

The waiting-moment stretched out, and out, and out, and finally she returned.

Where was that thing you felt that isn't anything, she asked?

Here, I showed her.

Put your arms in the air, she said. She felt, and squinted, and her brow furrowed, and she stepped aside again. Then she returned. Come back in a few hours when the doctor is free, she said, and we'll look a little more closely with ultrasound, just to be thorough. She smiled. Maybe just go have some lunch, she said, and we'll wrap this up when you return.

The hours stretched out and out and out. I felt nervous, but it was still all normal. I was too nervous to eat, but not too nervous yet to tweet. A finger pulling down the iPhone touchscreen still yielded replies from familiar names, and this was all going to end well. I drove back to the clinic.

Dr. Kristi Funk
is her name. How can anything go bad when the doctor's name is Funk, and there are so many funny things to tweet? She told me to lie down, put some goop on my chest, and waved a wand through the goop. The waves appeared on a screen. It looked like NASA video, something the Mars rovers might transmit home to a JPL engineer searching for distant water.

American Association of Professional Coders
American Health Information Management Association

Both are the largest organizations of their kind in the medical billing and coding industry, and their certifications are valued and respected by employers, hospitals and health care providers anywhere in the US.

The AAPC’s certification is called
Certified Professional Coder (CPC)
while AHIMA’s credential is called
Certified Coding Specialist-Physician (CCS or CCS-P)
.

Both AAPC and AHIMA have several local chapters with exam centers across the US and a few in foreign countries. You can choose your own location at any of the AAPC/AHIMA-designated exam centers in your town, city or county.

Please remember that if you are serious about a career (including a home-based career) in the medical billing and coding industry, then you NEED to get certified by at least one of these organizations.

To reiterate a fact, certified medical coders earn up to $7,000 more than non-certified coders. And to pass your certification exam, you need to start preparing now.

#9. CCA, CPC-A or CPC Certification for Coders with Little or No Experience

CCA
and
CPC-A
are two other designation certifications for coding career aspirants with little to no experience and/or formal training in a medical coding and billing program.

CCA stands for
Certified Coding Associate
(an AHIMA certification) while CPC-A stands for
Certified Professional Coder-Apprentice
(an AAPC certification just like CPC). But which one of these should a beginner coder choose?

Certified Coding Associate
Certified Professional Coder-Apprentice

Our recommendation is to
simply prepare for the CPC exam
. It’s the exact same thing as preparing for the CPC-A designation.

simply prepare for the CPC exam

Once you pass the CPC exam with a score of at least 70%, you will be awarded ONE of the following:

CPC designation
CPC-A designation

Remember that you will be using the
exact same books and study guide
for getting the CPC-A or CPC credential. The only difference is that CPC is awarded to passing candidates with at least 1 year work experience while CPC-A is awarded to candidates who pass the CPC exam but don’t have any work experience or formal training.